Unless you’re a man

“The thing I’ve become anxious about in recent times is this – there is certainly a feeling amongst some people of belief that they are under siege, that they are often disadvantaged, that they are looked at and considered in some way different and their faith makes them less worthy of regard,” he said.

That could be so, but it could also be inevitable given that their beliefs are not well supported. The conspiracy of silence about that incovenient fact has been broken lately. That’s as it should be.

I understand why a lot of people in faith groups feel a bit under siege. They’re in a world where there are a lot of very clever people who have a lot of access to the airwaves and write endlessly in the newspapers knocking religion and mocking God. The people who want to drive religion underground are much more active, much more vocal.

Yes, we are, and people in faith groups will just have to learn to put up with it. (And note that those people too have a lot of access to the airwaves and write endlessly in the newspapers knocking atheism and mocking atheists.) We are allowed to be both active and vocal. People in faith groups don’t get to veto us.

There is no doubt there’s quite a lot of intolerance towards people of faith and towards belief. There’s a great deal of polemic which is anti-religious, which is quite fashionable.

And there’s quite a lot of intolerance towards people of no faith, and towards unbelief. There’s a great deal of polemic which is anti-atheism, which is quite fashionable.

Being an Anglican, being a Muslim or being a Methodist or being a Jew is just as much part of your identity and you should not be penalised or treated in a discriminatory way because of that. That’s part of the settlement of a liberal democracy.

“Just as much part of your identity” as what? He doesn’t say. Either the Telegraph cut that bit, or he never did say. If he said “as race or sex” he’s wrong; he’s also wrong even if he didn’t. Religious beliefs can’t have a total, blanket protection order, because some of them are murderous or otherwise dangerous.

“It’s perfectly fair that you can’t be a Roman Catholic priest unless you’re a man,” he said.

And what about those “faith identities” that punish apostasy with death? Sure Jews and Christians don’t do this anymore, but it’s still in their book. Some Muslims in some places are still taking their medieval literature much too seriously.

Yeah, he’s all for equality and human rights… but some people are more equal than others. And the “right” to discriminate on religious grounds must be defended, while the right of people to complain about religions may need to be looked at. After all, if a religious leader’s feelings are hurt by those mean atheists, maybe those atheists should be silenced in the name of equality and human rights.

“There is a view that says religion is a private matter and it’s entirely a choice. I think that’s entirely not right. “Faith identity is part of what makes life richer and more meaningful for the individual. It is a fundamental part of what makes some societies better than others in my view.”

Good post – apart, perhaps, from the implication that atheists do in fact want to drive the religious underground – is that really the case? That was one of the details in the interview which annoyed me actually – many atheists are sympathetic to those who are prevented from practicing their religion and have no wish to drive anything about religion underground apart from practices which conflict with human rights.

This is what losing privilege looks and feels like to members of the hegemon: when they don’t get the consistent deference to their ideas and practices they’re accustomed to, it seems like a serious assault. Even when there’s still a whole damn lot of privilege left.

Oh, well. Justice never came without that kind of discomfort to those who benefit (even tacitly and relatively innocently) from injustice.

– Rieux, a white hetero male who is constantly attacked for being each of those three things!!11!

It depends what is meant by “drive religion underground.” I took Phillips to be resorting to the usual cheap exaggeration that turns secularism into a demolition project, and being bored to death with pointing that out, I skipped over it. I do want to “drive religion underground” if that means keeping it out of government; I even want to if it means putting it on the back foot and making it a lot more humble and tentative about its claims; I don’t want to if that means literal coercion. But hardly anybody does want that, so Phillips’s claim was just tiresome and silly.

Being an Anglican, being a Muslim or being a Methodist or being a Jew is just as much part of your identity and you should not be penalised or treated in a discriminatory way because of that. That’s part of the settlement of a liberal democracy.

Ophelia responds to this well, but I’ve also just finished reading the NYT article linked a couple of posts ago about the “true self,” and it’s struck me that there’s something going on in the thinking of some that seems to lead to the easy conflation of religious identity with other more intrinsic traits. (Ghah, so many problematic terms, so little time!)

I question the comparison of homosexuality and religion in Knobe’s article. My gut feeling, and I don’t think I’m totally off base here, as far as data goes either, is that sexual preference is very much not a choice in the same sense as religion. The waters are muddied by the lived experience of religion for many, if you’re born into a religion, surrounded by a religion, and by believers, then I understand the idea that it’s going to be very much part of your identity, and not easy to let go of, but religion is still a set of ideas, and dogma and beliefs. I know there’s data suggesting that we may be hard wired for, if not God belief, then at least applying agency to freakin everything, but I don’t know that it’s fair to suggest that that’s in the same league as the biological facts about sexual preference.

Am I missing something obvious here? It seems uncontroversial to me that sexual preference, like gender and race is clearly a different thing to religious belief. There is certainly some grey area, and some overlapping on the spectrum, but still.

Hm. I think his comments are more balanced than he’s being given credit for. He seems to be saying generally that churches in any activities that go beyond themselves (adoptions, etc.) have to follow the law and this isn’t discrimination, but – as with the priest comment – that it’s fair that they’re allowed to have their own internal rules even if they’re discriminatory. His description of evangelical churches presents them as dangerously homophobic and like their claims of persecuation are really about their wanting to have a larger say in the broader society and being thwarted. I don’t care for the faith-as-essential-blah-blah-blah stuff, and it betrays a real bias that’s a problem for someone in his position that should be pointed out, but the more general gist of these particular comments seems to be that a lot of Christians who feel they’re being discriminated against really aren’t. I’ll read it again…

The equality watchdog chairman said it would support believers who suffer discrimination because of their faith, and conceded there was a perception it had not done so in the past.

“That is slap bang in the middle of our anti-discriminatory work,” he said.

“Being an Anglican, being a Muslim or being a Methodist or being a Jew is just as much part of your identity and you should not be penalised or treated in a discriminatory way because of that. That’s part of the settlement of a liberal democracy.

“Our business is defending the believer. The law we’re here to implement recognises that religious identity is an essential part of this society. It’s an essential element of being a fulfilled human being.

“My real worry is that there are people who may well feel they’re being treated unfairly because of their faith and who actually in fact may be being treated unfairly because of their faith but for some reason feel they can’t get our support in getting justice.”

This is rather confusing. I can’t tell what he’s including in the category of discrimination. Although he talks about criticism of religion in general, I don’t think he is including that. Maybe he’s saying that because of the larger movement toward challenging beliefs, which makes it clear that belief is a choice, religious people may feel that actually being discriminated against on the basis of their religion (it’s a huge problem that he doesn’t mention atheism) wouldn’t be seen as a problem (as opposed to race, gender, sexual orientation) by anti-discrimination agencies?

That’s just about the most worrying comment in there. It’s a little ambiguous, for a start, but if it’s as universal as it seems to be, then he’s arguing that non-believers are lacking something essential. No no no no no.

Phillips’ commission is under a lot of pressure from the current Government, so in an interview with the right-wing Telegraph this is what you get.

Reading the article, he’s spot on about issues like Catholic adoption agencies, and you could say that all he’s going on about with the rest of it is the law against religious discrimination. Politically, in the Sunday Telegraph, he needs to reassure his audience.

I’d rather he had told the Sunday Telegraph a few more home truths along the lines of the bit where he says:

There are a lot of Christian activist voices who appear bent on stressing the kind of persecution that I don’t really think exists in this country.

Phillips has in the past come out against sectarian schools, so he’s not completely anti-secular, but his position generally is weak, which is why he has to pull out the rhetoric we’re now seeing.

Being an Anglican, being a Muslim or being a Methodist or being a Jew is just as much part of your identity….

What utter freaking nonsense. Religion is something that is overlaid and can be put on or put off like an overcoat. It is not part of your identity at all. I know – I put off religion when I was fourteen and my identity (strangely) rermained intact!

Dangerous stuff, and very concerning coming from someone tasked with protecting people from discrimination. The last quote seems a crystal clear example of religious privilege – a form of discrimination that would otherwise be considered unacceptable (and, in the UK, illegal) is given a pass because it stems from a religious belief. This is precisely why we have to be more vocal and also why we have to become better at making our case forcefully.

“I think there’s an awful lot of noise about the Church being persecuted but there is a more real issue that the conventional churches face that the people who are really driving their revival and success believe in an old time religion which in my view is incompatible with a modern, multi-ethnic, multicultural society.”

I think that is something we can all get behind, no? We have to remember it’s the Torygraph spinning the interview, after all ;)

Not to say that Phillips or the Commission has always been on the right side of the arguments, but they have been on the right side of some of the arguments, and I think we should recognise the context in which these remarks are made. The Sunday Telegraph will undoubtedly have been trying to catch him out, so he’s been very careful in making the usual noises about faith, without actually saying anything much at all. What he’s said about specifics here seems in general to be stuff we can agree with. The rest is vague hand-waving for the audience.

The Daily Mail has picked up on his remarks about integration, inevitably. But Phillips has been so careful that these are just crumbs from the table for them.

Remember, the Government are not favourably disposed towards the Commission.

I don’t understand his contention that the church’s should have an automatic right to discriminate when it comes to their employees

“It’s perfectly fair that you can’t be a Roman Catholic priest unless you’re a man,” he said.

After all, this is the man who insisted that a political party (the BNP, an extreme right wing bigoted racist bunch) had to be open to everyone and that they could not discriminate. Surely if it’s a right for religions, then other organisations must also be allowed that right?

David and Josh, regarding the analogy between being homosexual and being Christian (or any other religion), I think the point is that, for many believers, adhering to a religion is like being gay — and no wonder. After all, for most people, religious is a part of childhood indoctrination. If you have stuck with your religious upbringing it becomes a part of one’s identity, and becomes as natural as breathing. Remember that Christians, when they have their children baptised, promise to bring them up in the ‘faith and admonition of the Lord’ (or something like that). Their being Christian (or religious) is a part of a costly sacrifice (in theory of religion terms), and for many children (I was among them), who are brought up to emulate respected authorities who have made even greater sacrifices — I was brought up on a diet of missionaries and Christian heroes — it is hard not to think of being religious as an intimate part of who you are.

So I can understand people (like the equalities commissioner — or whatever he is) thinking in terms of the discomfort people feel at finding their beliefs disrespected and their identities under siege. (Just shows how effective the new atheism is.) Of course, the truth is — and this is something the redoubtable Trevor Phillips doesn’t seem to notice — that religion is coming under attack, not because of disrespect for religious believers as such, but because contemporary knowledge is corrosive of religion. The peole who are now nonbelievers were once (most of them, anyway) at least loosely related to faith. But faith can’t stand up to the reality of the world and what we know — what we know even about religion. One thing that should come out of all this is a recognition that it is wrong to indoctrinate children in religion. It is wrong to baptise children. It is wrong immur children in a constricted intellectual world which will be found later to be in conflict with what we know. Religion is — and it should be becoming — a marginal affair, for holdovers from the past. We are in the process of reframing the foundations of social belonging. Let’s keep doing that. Time to put the genie back into the bottle.

You missed the bit where he said that he’s here to implement a law recognising that religious identity is an essential part lf this society and that it’s an essential part of being a fulfilled human being. How’s that for the chief of the Equality Commission, all but calling a large proportion of the population sub-human?

Being an Anglican, being a Muslim or being a Methodist or being a Jew is just as much part of your identity and you should not be penalised or treated in a discriminatory way because of that. That’s part of the settlement of a liberal democracy.

I partly agree with Phillips here. I used to be a Christian (Anglican) and it was a part of the way I identified myself to others. It also gave me an important local social group to belong to, and was I suppose the closest thing I have ever had to a wider identity that immediate family: a tribal identity.

As European Christianity had a more cogent explanation of the Universe than the pre-Christian tribal societies, and as it accumulated armed force, the tribes converted. This continued until well into the 20th C.

What Phillips is complaining about here is the fact that religious tribalism is under attack from modern scientific rationalism, and it is losing. Just as Baal was no match for Jehovah, so Jehovah is no match for human reason. He wants the dogs called off, and the sensibilities of the Tooth Fairy’s followers respected: with silence.

On the other hand, the shamans of the long-defunct tribal cults could well say ‘welcome to the club’.

Up here in Sweden religious people are in a minority of the population. There are still plenty of churches and religious festivals but there is very little expectation of unconditional respect. The Swedish church itself is very liberal compared to US or even UK churches (female priests since 1960, gay marriages are performed in churches etc.) The church is free to promote their message as they see fit but a lot of this promotion is very woolly and not so obviously damaging (there’s no promoting fear of hell, condemning homosexuals or womens reproductive rights etc) that the non religious feel the need to publicly confront it (its much more lovey-lovey compared to the hatey-hatey christianity you see in the US).

What this means is that the fear of religious people that ‘militant’ atheism seeks to eradicate religion is unfounded. The more outspoken atheism of the gnus tends to be in reaction to the hostile environment that religious privilege engenders. Once that privilege is removed there is no inevitable shift to a religion free environment or even an ‘anti-religion’ environment.

Phillips has been accused, probably not to his disapproval, of being an unashamed politician. Coupled with the deep dislike of the EHCR among most Tory MPs and committee members, the release of another critical audit report about his organisation today probably had him calling the Telegraph for an appointment.

It is telling that he feels so comfortable in defending invented persecutions over free and sceptical speech.

“It is telling that he feels so comfortable in defending invented persecutions over free and sceptical speech.”

But the concept of ‘free speech’ is somewhat foreign to many non Americans. There is no constitutional guarantee in place in the UK on this topic. Blasphemy laws were still on the books until relatively recently – only being abolished in 2008!

He probably feels comfortable in suggesting that criticism or mocking of religion is beyond the pale for the simple reason that he is reflecting what most of the population thinks. In other words he is making a perfectly politically correct argument – one that is supported by the majority of voters.

Some of the swedish christians I’ve met don’t even particularly think about supernatural things. A literal “something” is what they believe in. Doesn’t get fuzzier. It’s mostly a feel good institution, where nobody really listens to the lyrics.

And I’ve met at least one swedish muslim who flat out admits to believing it because her parents do. She treats it as equivalent to a race and doesn’t quite consider there to be a difference. She even physically shrugs.